II
The atelier was on the ground floor at the end of a German garden full of angular desolations. It was a large, bare, dusty apartment, the glare of the August sun tempered by green shades nearly obscuring the big window facing the north. A young woman sat high on a revolving platform. She was very fat. As the sculptor fixed her with his slow glance he saw that her head, a pretty head, was too small for her monstrous bulk; her profile, pure Greek, the eyes ox-like, the cups full of feeling, with heavy accents beneath them. Her face, almost slim, had planes eloquent with surface meanings upon the cheeks and chin, while the mouth, sweet for a large woman, revealed amiability quite in accord with the expression of the eyes. These were the glory of her countenance, these and her resonant black hair. Isolate this head from the shoulders, from all the gross connotations of the frame, and the trick would be done. So thought the sculptor, as the problem posed itself clearly; then he saw her figure and doubted.
"I am hopeless, am I not, Herr Arthmann?" Her voice was so frankly appealing, so rich in comic intention, that he sat down and laughed. She eagerly joined in: "And yet my waist is not so large as Mitwindt's. We always call her Bagpipes. She is absurd. And such a chest—! Why, I'm a mere child. Anyhow, all Germans like big singers, and all the German Wagner singers are big women, are they not, Herr Arthmann? There was Alboni and Parepa-Rosa—I know they were not Wagner singers; but they were awful all the same—and just look at the Schnorrs, Materna, Rosa Sucher, poor Klafsky and—"
"My dear young friend," interrupted the sculptor as he took up a pointer and approached a miniature head in clay which stood upon a stand, "my dear"—he did not say "friend" the second time—"I remarked nothing about your figure being too large for the stage. I was trying to get it into harmony with your magnificent shoulders and antique head. That's all." His intonation was caressing, the speech of a cultivated man, and his accent slightly Scandinavian; at times his voice seemed to her as sweetly staccato as a mandolin. He gazed with all his vibrating artistic soul into the girl's humid blue eyes; half frightened she looked down at her pretty, dimpled hands—the hands of a baby despite their gladiatorial size.
"How you do flatter! All foreigners flatter American girls, don't they? Now you know you don't think my shoulders magnificent, do you? And my waist—O! Herr Arthmann, what shall I do with my waist? As Brünnhilde, I'm all right to move about in loose draperies, but as Fricka, as Gutrune—Gutrune who falls fainting beside Siegfried's bier! How must I look on my back? Oh, dear! and I diet, never drink water at meals, walk half the day and seldom touch a potato. And you know what that means in Germany! There are times when to see a potato, merely hearing the word mentioned, brings tears to my eyes. And yet I get no thinner—just look at me!"
He did. Her figure was gigantic. She weighed much over two hundred pounds, though the mighty trussing to which she subjected herself, and a discreet manner of dressing made her seem smaller. Arthmann was critical, and did not disguise the impossibility of the task. He had determined on a head and bust, something heroic after the manner of a sturdy Brünnhilde. The preparations were made, the skeleton, framework of lead pipe for the clay, with crossbar for shoulders and wooden "butterflies" in position. On the floor were water-buckets, wet cloths and a vast amount of wet clay—clay to catch the fleshly exterior, clay to imprison the soul—perhaps, of Fridolina. But nothing had been done except a tiny wax model, a likeness full of spirit, slightly encouraging to the perplexed artist. The girl was beautiful; eyes, hair, teeth, coloring—all enticed him as man. As sculptor the shapeless, hopeless figure was a thing for sack-like garments, not for candid clay or the illuminating commentary of marble. She drew a silk shawl closer about her bare shoulders.
"And Isolde—what shall I do? Frau Cosima says that I may sing it two summers from now; but then she promised me Brünnhilde two years ago after I had successfully sung Elsa. I know every note of 'Tristan,' for I've had over a thousand piano rehearsals, and Herr Siegfried and Caspar Dennett both say that in time it will be my great rôle." "Who was it you mentioned besides the Prince Imperial?"—they always call Siegfried Wagner the Prince Imperial or the Heir Apparent in Bayreuth—"Mr. Dennett. He is the celebrated young American conductor—the only American that ever conducted in Bayreuth. You saw him the other night at Sammett's garden. Don't you remember the smooth faced, very good-looking young man?—you ought to model him. He was with Siegfried when he spoke to me." "And you say that he admires your Isolde?" persisted Arthmann, pulling at his short reddish beard. "Why, of course! Didn't he play the piano accompaniments?" "Was his wife always with you?" "Now, Herr Arthmann, you are a regular gossipy German. Certainly she wasn't. We in America don't need chaperons like your Ibsen women—are you really Norwegian or Polish? Is your name, Wenceslaus, Bohemian or Polish? Besides, here I am alone in your studio in Bayreuth, the most scandal-mongering town I ever heard of. My mother would object very much to this sort of thing, and I'm sure we are very proper." "Oh, very," replied the sculptor; "when do you expect your mother? To-morrow, is it not?"
The girl nodded. Tired of talking, she watched with cool nervousness the movements of the young man; watched his graceful figure, admirable poses; his long, brown fingers smoothing and puttering in the clay; his sharply etched profile, so melancholy, insincere. "And this Dennett?" he resumed. She opened her little mouth. "Please don't yawn, Fridolina," he begged. "I wasn't yawning, only trying to laugh. Dennett is on your mind. He seems to worry you. Don't be jealous—Wenceslaus; he is an awful flirt and once frightened me to death by chasing me around the dressing-room at the opera till I was out of breath and black and blue from pushing the chairs and tables in his way. And what do you suppose he gave as an excuse? Why, he just said he was exercising me to reduce my figure, and hadn't the remotest notion of kissing me. Oh, no, he hadn't, had he?" She pealed with laughter, her companion regarding her with tense lips. "No one but a Yankee girl would have thought of telling such a story." "Why, is it improper?" She was all anxiety. "No, not improper, but heartless, simply heartless. You have never loved, Margaret Fridolina," he said, harshly. "Call me Meg, Wenceslaus, but not when mamma is present," was her simple answer. He threw down his wooden modelling spatula.
"Oh, this is too much," he angrily exclaimed: "you tell me of men who chase you"—"a man Wenceslaus," she corrected him earnestly—"you tell me all this and you know I love you; without your love I shall throw up sculpture and go to sea as a sailor. Meg, Meg, have you no heart?" "Why, you little boy, what have I said to offend you? Why are you so cynical when I know you to be so sentimental?" Her voice was arch, an intimate voice with liquid inflections. He began pacing the chilly floor of the studio.
"Let us be frank. I've only known you two months, since the day we accidentally met, leaving Paris for Bayreuth. You have written your mother nothing of our engagement—well, provisional engagement, if you will—and you insist on sticking to the operatic stage. I loathe it, and I confess to you that I am sick with jealousy when I see you near that lanky, ill-favored German tenor Burgmann." "What, poor, big me!" she interjected, in teasing accents. "Yes, you, Fridolina. I can quite sympathize with what you tell me of your mother's dislike for the rôle of Isolde. You are not temperamentally suited to it; it is horrible to think of you in that second act." "How horrible? My figure, you mean?" "Yes, your figure, too, would be absurd." He was brutal now. "And you haven't the passion to make anything of the music. You've never loved, never will, passionately—" "But I'll sing Isolde all the same," she cried. "Not with my permission." "Then without you and your permission." She hastily arose and was about to step down from her pedestal when the door opened.